Video Games for Learning
Course
Games Are Fun [5:27]
Sometimes fun might mean spending a day just playing a game together and talking about the experience so that the next time you play it, you can look at the way it can impact your instruction and look at the way playing the game can lead to academic gains.
Sometimes, they perhaps seem pretty meaningless. To you, that is. But to the person playing it, it's fun. It's fun to be chased by zombies. It's fun to be scared, going into a dark or a cloudy or abandoned, desolate location and have to fend for yourself. It's fun to race against friends. It's fun to be stuck on a puzzle to an extent that it's so frustrating, you want to throw the controller at the TV. When you see that, know that that is sometimes what fun looks like in a video game.
Games are meant to be entertainment, right? So be mindful when you're thinking about games in your library, of how the games are presented to students. Buy in with the students relies heavily on whether or not the activity feels like a game or more like instruction. So when framing using video games with students, I myself have often looked at addressing the fact that this is a game and we should talk about how this is fun to play and this is really a wonderful experience that we get to do it together. But remind them that at the same time, there's a lot we can learn from these video games and this is an opportunity for us to reflect on ourselves and our own learning.
A colleague and I did a lot of work on using the Nintendo Wii, in the math classroom, as a tool to collect data. We looked at games that students have played, that families have owned, all across the country, games like Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit. These are games that packed in titles with the Wii system when we bought it. Or ones that were bestsellers. But more importantly, in these games, we saw lots of intrinsic connections to math. And so, we saw the opportunity to talk about math in the context of a video game. We can have fun together in our classroom. We will play this game together, then we're going to step back and talk about how you were just doing math right there.
That becomes really important because we have a lot of students in school right now who do not think they are any good at math or they're not any good at language arts or social studies or science. There is something that a child has in them, that is so against some of these topics because they just can't seem to figure them out. But what if they just are struggling with the way we are trying to teach them? What if they do find science interesting, but they don't find science interesting the way we teach it?
Or they do find math to be challenging, but something that they get a great sense of accomplishment when they are able to achieve, but they just don't get that sense of accomplishment because they don't achieve a lot in the math classroom. Being able to use video games and harness the fun in them in an educational environment, is something that becomes sort of the best tool that we have because we're engaging students with the things that they like the most, with the interest that are most relevant to them.
As I said before, fun to a gamer looks different. It can be stressful. It can mean playing the same level over and over and over until you beat it. It can be ridiculous. And so, you can't help but want to share the experience with somebody else. It can look different than what we would ordinarily ascribe to as fun, but you can find out if it was fun just by having a conversation with your students.
Talk to them about, when they play video games, what sorts of things do they like most about playing those games? And those qualities that they like the most? Think about what it would look like to put those qualities in your library instruction. Let's take what we've just discussed about how games keep work fun and let's consider what this can look like in our library.
In what ways are we asking for students to accomplish tasks? To do work for us? And in what ways then can we reframe that to be fun, to be challenging, to be meaningful work that they will have a sense of accomplishment when they achieve the work for you and turn it in? Not that they would just simply feel like, "This is an assigned task and I have it done now," but rather that they'll feel good about having it done. They'll feel better about accomplishing it.
Are we really having honest to goodness fun with our kids? You know, sometimes that just means spending a day just playing the game together and talking about the experience so that the next day that you play it, you can look at the way it can impact your instruction and look at the way we can have academic gains in playing the game. Games are meant to be fun, so let's never forget that games should be fun no matter what context we play them.
Winner reminds us in this concluding lesson to be mindful of how games are presented to students, with what should ideally be a balance of playful experience, learning, and reflection. Whether playing games with students or using strategies culled from gaming in other learning contexts, librarians should search for ways to help students feel accomplishment, growth, pride, and fun.
To conclude this course, review the document, "Implementing Video Gaming," provided in the Resources. What ideas interest you at this stage in your learning? What suggestions would require help or feedback from others? What questions do you have, or what additional resources do you need? Whom, or what, are potential sources of information?
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Video Games for Learning: Implementing Videogaming." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1985419?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=0.
Entry ID: 2122889
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Winner, Matthew C. "Video Games for Learning. Games Are Fun [5:27]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1985419?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=0.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1985419?learningModuleId=1980803&topicCenterId=0
Entry ID: 1985419